Prospect Studios

I’ve been on a lot of TV and movie sets during my newspaper career, but I had never visted the set of a soap opera — until this summer.

In July, my editor, Ardua Harris, and I dropped by the historic Prospect Studios in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A. to hang out with the “General Hospital” gang and, more specifically, to interview Maurice Benard, a Martinez native and one of the most popular soap stars around.

I immediately learned that all the things I’d heard about the fast-paced world of soaps were true: They really do burn through the script pages at lightning speed. They really do turn scenes around in a snap. I can recall being on the set of “Deadwood” once and watching the crew literally spend a couple of hours (or more) on 30 seconds of dialogue. At “GH,” they shoot several scenes in that amount of time. Continue Reading →